Microplastics From Washing Clothes Could Be Hurting Your Tomatoes (washingtonpost.com) 24
A new study from Cornell and University of Toronto researchers has found that polyester microfibers shed from synthetic clothing during laundry can interfere with cherry tomato plant development [non-paywalled source] when these particles accumulate in agricultural soil. Plants grown in contaminated soil were 11% less likely to emerge, grew smaller and took several days longer to flower and ripen.
Household laundry is a leading source of this contamination. Treated sewage sludge retains roughly 90% of microfibers from washers, and farmers in some countries apply this material to up to 75% of cropland as fertilizer. Some scientists have questioned the methodology.
Willie Peijnenburg, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leiden University, told WaPo the microfiber concentration used was much higher than field observations. His research suggests plants primarily absorb microplastics through airborne particles entering leaf stomata rather than through soil.
Household laundry is a leading source of this contamination. Treated sewage sludge retains roughly 90% of microfibers from washers, and farmers in some countries apply this material to up to 75% of cropland as fertilizer. Some scientists have questioned the methodology.
Willie Peijnenburg, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leiden University, told WaPo the microfiber concentration used was much higher than field observations. His research suggests plants primarily absorb microplastics through airborne particles entering leaf stomata rather than through soil.
The fear machine has been in overdrive (Score:2)
Re: The fear machine has been in overdrive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why should we assume it is an issue?
Certainly I doubt it's anywhere remotely as bad for plants as modern industrial agriculture.
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Certainly I doubt it's anywhere remotely as bad for plants as modern industrial agriculture.
Modern industrial agriculture feeds the world. You're not going to be able to sustain the likely peak population on traditional farming alone. Of course there is always room to improve and reduce the harm and increase the health. Which is why we also cannot allow profits alone to decide everything in the industry.
We're aware of the problems of monocrops, but that practice is slowly on the decline. And there is more consumer awareness of the ethics in the practice of concentrated animal feeding operations (C
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The claim assumes that "traditional farming" means low-yield subsistence,
but that assumption is historically and empirically false.
Please don't put words in my mouth.
You should not set policy according to Masanobu Fukuoka's techniques, as they do not and have not scaled. Reproducing his results has been very inconsistent. It turns out the land you grow on matters a lot with these techniques and other permaculture techniques.
The other issue with traditional farming and permaculture is that we already broke things. We have invasive species everywhere and certain crops are incredibly labor intensive without pesticides or GMOs. This is do
Re: The fear machine has been in overdrive (Score:2)
I got through two sentences before realizing you did not write any of this and it was probably chat bot drivel. Way to take up a bunch of space and contribute nothing to the conversation. LLMs have opened up new avenues for you to be an annoying troll.
Re: The fear machine has been in overdrive (Score:4, Insightful)
"X could very well be causing you cancer! We suggest you stop using it!"
"Stop fear-mongering -- it's as yet unproven!"
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Certainly having micro-plastics in every organ in our bodies is doing no good for us. It's very likely causing us harm. It's still being researched, yes, but I'm certainly not happy that they are there in the first place.
It would be nice to not add more
natural fibers (Score:3)
I prefer natural fibers. Synthetic fibers are not good for the planet.
https://textileexchange.org/kn... [textileexchange.org]
"Polyester continues to be the most widely produced fiber, making up 59% of total global fiber output of which 88 % is fossil-based. In terms of volume, polyester fiber production increased from around 71 million tonnes in 2023 to around 78 million tonnes in 2024. "
"Although [cotton] remains the second most widely produced fiber after polyester, global [cotton] production fell slightly by 1% to 19%. In terms of volume, it decreased from 24.8 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 24.5 million tonnes in 2023/24."
Because cotton sleepwear is banned in USA (Score:2)
I've concluded that the reason polyester took off is that natural fibers are flammable and therefore prohibited in children's sleepwear and loungewear in Slashdot's home country (16 CFR 1615-1616). See Consumer Product Safety Commission's page about this ban [cpsc.gov]
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Wow, it never even occurred to me.. (Score:2)
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Wear only cotton clothing. (Score:3)
Sadly everything has consequences (Score:2)
The environment might be better off if you switched to wearing polyester given the level of environmental contamination that a pesticide-intensive crop like cotton causes.
Re: Wear only cotton clothing. (Score:1)
It takes a large amount of pesticide to grow cotton, and the Boll Weevil has become resistant to most modern pesticides, which means you have to use really nasty ones to grow clothing-quality cotton. Those pesticides are not removed that thoroughly because, why bother when profits are on the line?
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Wear only cotton clothing. Cotton is not poisonous.
Cotton is nice and all, but there are also, in no particular order, hemp, silk, linen, wool, ramie, lotus fibers, cashmere/mohair/angorra, alpaca. Then there are non-plastic synthetics like rayon and other types of viscose made from various sources like types of wood, bamboo, soy, remnant cotton fibers that are too short for traditional use, fermented coconut milk, etc. There are also other materials that can be used in various ways in clothing that aren't plastic like latex, leather, various kinds of metal
Contradictions? (Score:2)
Didn't I just see some studies go out saying a lot of the old microplastic studies were sus?
Lucky for me (Score:2)
I've never dumped out my wash water on my tomato patch
Wow, I sure am glad (Score:1)
Damn, I am glad to learn this. I just consider myself lucky that my washing machine dumps into the sewer rather than into my tomato garden. I feel sorry for all those people that are using washing machine discharge to irrigate their agricultural soil.
dryers (Score:2)
Dryers send the lint right into the atmosphere.